Tell Me About It: At best girlfriend is being thoughtless

By CAROLYN HAX, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, January 3, 2006

Dear Carolyn: My girlfriend has a guy friend she met around the same time she started dating me. He fell in love with her and she became conflicted. While in an exclusive relationship with me she went on several "dates" with her friend and ultimately broke up with me for a time to figure out which of us she wanted to date.

She decided she wanted to date me and had no romantic feelings for her friend. After informing him of this, she continued to treat him as one of her best friends. This led to multiple discussions with him to reaffirm she was not interested in him.

She continues, six months later, to put him in this best friend category and expects me to treat him as such, even though he is still in love with her, by his own admission. I felt disrespected and cheated on even though their relationship was never physical. I refuse to be involved in any social gathering with the two of them and detest any involvement he has in her personal life. Is it unreasonable to expect her to keep their friendship from affecting our relationship, or do I need to accept that they are "just friends"? -- Three's a Crowd

Dear Crowd: Yes, you need to accept they're just friends. If she wanted to be more than just friends with this guy, she would have used one of her indefensibly ample opportunities to do exactly that.

That she gave herself all these opportunities, and continues to do so, and grabbed a few of them on the sly, suggests a casual disregard for any feelings that aren't her own -- and that's something you shouldn't accept.

People are free to choose their own friends, and they don't lose that entitlement when they mate.

But I also don't believe that entitlement trumps decency. She has seen firsthand that the "best friend" has false hopes, that her attention fuels them, that her words aren't enough to discourage them, and that he's openly not moving on. Her remaining friends with him under these conditions seems cruel to him.

Where your feelings come in, it gets more complicated. You can't condemn a mate's friendship lightly, chauvinistically or selfishly.

But there are times when you can justly draw a line (and leave if it isn't respected).

Granted, you're the one who let her put you on hold while she, hello, auditioned a different boyfriend. Still, her asking that of you, and then asking you not to find his continued presence painful, is at best thoughtless and at worst also cruel.

We all have to suck it up sometimes, but for good causes, like maturity, friendship, trust. Underwriting someone else's ego trip doesn't make that list.

Dear Carolyn: Though it may seem like a joke, why is it so bad for people to marry someone like their mother? -- Va.

Dear Va. Because it's oogie?

Right. Sorry.

Because it often happens one of two ways: unwittingly, when you reproduce your parents' emotional pattern without even seeing it, much less questioning whether it works for you; or wittingly, when you idolize your parents without seeing (or admitting) their frailties.

And that's because all parents, obviously, make mistakes. The kids who see them are the ones who try not to repeat them.